FBI Denies Data Mining Grocery Records

The San Francisco bureau of the FBI emphatically denies that it searched through grocery store records in the Bay Area to identify Iranian operatives or terrorists, as was reported by Congressional Quarterly‘s Jeff Stein and commented on by THREAT LEVEL earlier this week.

FBI Special Agent Joseph M. Schadler says there was no ‘Total Falafel Awareness’ program in San Francisco.

Officials at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. plan to write a letter to the editor of CQ disputing the piece, according to Schadler.

I asked in my post whether grocery stores volunteered the records or whether the FBI used National Security Letters or the infamous Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Christopher Sogohian suggested that the FBI may have used credit card records, not supermarket databases for such a project. While Schadler’s quoted statement here doesn’t speak to that possibility, comments he made off-the-record indicate that the denial would clearly extend to Soghoian’s hypothesis and my questions.

THREAT LEVEL filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents about the alleged falafel finding on Thursday. I also emailed CQ‘s Stein for comment about the FBI’s denial using the email address at the end of the falafel piece but that email bounced. (UPDATE: See comments as to how this was my fault)

UPDATE: In response to the comments left in the blog by Stein, I clarified that Schadler told me that the D.C. office, not the S.F. bureau, was planning to send a the letter to the editor to CQ. I thought that was clear in the original, but see how it could have been read otherwise in my original formulation.